One Last Rant Before End of Year

Let’s jump on the soapbox one last time before we bid adieu to the madness that has been 2024.

(You know, it kind of feels like I’ve been on the soapbox more this year than any other. Maybe I’ve just become the old guy yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. I told a friend that the other day and he said yes, I am, but that the world has also changed and we need more people on soapboxes. Not sure what that means, but there you go.)

Anywho, did you see the exchange between Sen. Josh Hawley and NCAA President Charlie Baker earlier this month? Baker used to make $185K a year as the governor of Massachusetts. His salary now isn’t public, but we’re told his predecessor Mark Emmert pulled down just a tad less than $3 mill a year.

Is Baker in the same ballpark? Probably. Hopefully he’s not a lot higher. Because anyone making $57,000 a week or about $1,445 an hour ought to have answers. Not some of the answers. Capital A, capital L, capital L – ALL the answers.

But when he was being grilled by Hawley during a committee hearing about the impact of legal sports betting on college athletics, he had darn few.

(So long as I’m the old guy yelling at kids about the grass, let me add in here that nothing good comes from the now-legal practice of sports betting. The hypocrisy with baseball alone probably has Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose turning over in their graves).

I digress.

Hawley, a Republican Senator from Missouri, got in Baker’s face about transgenders in college athletics. Maybe it’s because I’m a father of two daughters, albeit it was a ways back? Maybe it’s because I THINK I have an ounce of common sense still left in my aging gray matter? Maybe it’s because I want those pesky kids off my lawn? Whatever the reason, how in the world is this an issue?

How did the word biological get added before saying male or female in today’s world? Is there another kind? Did God go and create a non-biological female . . . and instruct them to disrupt girls’ and women’s sports?

Here’s the deal. There were several instances this past volleyball season where teams forfeited matches instead of playing against San Jose State – a team that had a male playing on the women’s team.

Maybe it was a protest? Maybe it was safety? Maybe it was fear of a lawsuit?

Think about that one for a second. Baker all but said to Hawley that denying a male athlete the ability to play a female sport – and dress and shower with females in the locker room – could result in a lawsuit. I wonder what the liability is if a male seriously injures a female during athletic competition? Let’s go a step farther? What’s the exposure for the NCAA if a male commits a crime against a female athlete in the locker room?

Let’s go back to me being a dad of female daughters who were high school and college athletes. There is no part, not one tiny iota of my being that would have been OK with a male dressing, undressing, showering, etc. with my daughters.

What parent would be OK with that?

It seems to me that the NCAA – and much of the world – is so afraid of a lawsuit or ticking off this group or that one that we have lost our minds.

And no, this is not some old narrow-minded guy denying anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community anything. You folks can keep adding all the letters you want, live the way you want, participate in any sort of relationships you desire. It’s your life. And the limits on my life are such that I don’t get to tell you how to live. But the opposite is true, too. You don’t get to extend your rights to the point where they infringe on others.

The NCAA needs to find a little backbone and fortitude and start standing up for all their athletes, not just the ones they are afraid of.

It’s maddening because it’s all part of this “woke” world we live in today. A friend of mine pointed out that he sees “woke” as simply being aware — conscious of the needs of others and actively try to help; recognizing the diverse needs within society and doing what he can to support them.

I wish everyone looked at it that way.

I also wish that if you disagree with the folks who take wokeness to a whole other level that the debate wouldn’t turn into WW III. But that’s the reality in today’s world, isn’t it. Many on the woke side aren’t as level-headed and caring as my friend. They have their view and Katy bar the door if anyone sees things differently. It’s been said in this space multiple times that our world has turned into two groups, you’re either with us, or agin’ us.

That’s sad – and it’s getting us nowhere.

OK, let me get one more rant off my chest before we close the book on 2024.

This unfolding story about drones is fascinating to me. (Anyone want to guess when we’ll hear about them near Camp Atterbury in southern Indiana?)

It’s been said by many that the federal government’s position – we don’t know what they are, but they do not pose a threat – is insane. If we don’t know what they are, how would we know if they’re a threat or not?

Let’s not forget that this is the same federal government that couldn’t shoot down a balloon as big as a school bus traveling slowly across the United States until after it floated near enough to military locations to record who knows what kind of sensitive data and information.

How many presidents have warned us of what our government could become? Just in my lifetime we have heard Eisenhower and Reagan famously speak up. Remember what Reagan said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” Or when he said: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Whether we are talking exploding crime and homelessness in some of our major cities, open borders, a president pardoning his own son, balloons, drones, statements that make no sense . . . this list could go on a while . . . the reality is we live in a world turned upside down. It does not appear that it’s going to right itself anytime in the near future either.

Buckle up, Buttercups! Twenty-twenty four was a wild one. Lord knows what 2025 will bring.

Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically in The Times. Timmons is the chief executive officer of Sagamore News Media, the company that owns The Noblesville Times. He is also a proud Noblesville High School graduate and can be contacted at [email protected].